When you're a foreign in the country you live in, sometimes nostalgia makes you feel homesick. We have not had summer holidays yet (they're approaching), and some days ago, while cooking apples compote, we had the visit of our neighbour.

We had told him some days before that birds had taken all the plums from our trees, so he arrived with an entire basket of plums from his garden. This is not the first time he does something like this. At the beginning we were very surprised about this kind of reactions, as we were not used to this living in Paris, and, really, this is something we appreciate.

So, besides cooking a lot of apples compote for our baby these last days, we had so many fruits that we decided to freeze plums to cook some cakes during the winter. Also, we've been cooking apple and plum jam that we will eat at home and we will offer as summer present from home to our relatives and friends when we'll meet them during the holidays.

This is one of the luxury pleasures we were looking for when we decided to move to the countryside: picking fruits from the trees, without any treatment, and eating them or cooking with. Also, having fresh flowers from the garden at home. In the picture, close to the jam, there's a dried bouquet. It is the first one Sacha has offered me, coming back home from a walk with his grandma, three days ago. This year, this is one of my preferred summer memories.